A discussion on the ownership of (digital) intellectual property

I disagree. A pattern of 0s and 1s cannot be property. Who owns number one?

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P.S. And you…you’ll own nothing :rofl:

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I do! :rofl:

Edit: I’m not a zero! I’m a one.

Edit2: Make that +1

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My English language knowledge seems that creates a mess. :rofl:

Maybe Copyright, License, attribution, are better known words.
A relevant case that was also not immediately understood as a violation is the Copilot case.

It was expressed that

The focus of the 21st Century will be on Information

What the 21st century holds will depend largely on our collective actions as humans during the next critical decade.

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Have you seen anything like what you imply? I am not talking about fictional, potential, or fantastic.

I think you know what i mean! :innocent:

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image

I believe copyright is an unjust law. I believe I have the right to copy, archive, and share all information I have access too. Preventing me to do so is a violation of real property rights, an attempt to criminalise how I use my own tangible property, whose ownership is indisputable (for example, my paper and ink) to protect someone else’s imaginary property (a pattern of information, a sequence of zeros and ones).

Nobody should have the right to usurp the ownership over a non-tangible concept, like a number. If I said that I own the number fourteen, and that you are not allowed to use it and that whenever you count, you have to do it thus: …, 12, 13, 15, 16… because using the number fourteen is a violation of my rights, you would rightfully laugh at me. But this is exactly what copyright is. Every book, every picture, every sound, every piece of digital media is just a very big number (the word “digital” should ring a bell). All information is nothing but zeroes and ones. Yet, there actually exist people who take the concept of copyright seriously. It’s literally someone trying to prevent you from using a number.

Copying information is not stealing, because there is no property in information. If I copy the text of your book into my notebook, I have not deprived you of that text, you still have everything you had before my act took place. Of course, I should not plagiarise your work, because that would be fradulent to a third party who doesn’t know better, but plagiarism and copying with attribution are two entirely different things.

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I agree with your premise that copyright is an unjust law and your example but I wonder if you extrapolate the concept to a program which is nothing more than a sequence of letters and characters.

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Yes, all digital media is just information, software included. And all information is just numbers (or, to be more precise, numbers are just one possible representation of information). My claim is that there is no property in information. There is only property in physical objects, like tangible books made of paper and ink, hard drives, memory chips, etc… But the information contained in them, as an abstract, non-tangible concept, cannot have an owner, because it doesn’t satisfy the basic requirements to classify something as property (namely, being rivalrous and excludable).

As a habitual user of torrent for all my entertainment needs I salute you!

If I am a scientist and I put all my money into research to find a new drug against Alzheimer, I certainly want to protect that information with a patent to make up for all the money I have spent for the research and to make a living out of it.

If you take that information from me, without my consent, you are a thief. In other words: There can be property in information.

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@dalto owns this discussion!
All hail @dalto ! :rofl:

The problem is that patents tend to get abused by big companies and patent trolls to generate even more profit, even pharmaceutical companies abuse patents.

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Yeah exactly this, general patents are filed all the time where company describe a general concept of something that doesn’t even exist yet and when someone then comes up with an idea that sounds the same they are asked to pay them because it is copying “their idea” or else they get get sued.

There is no doubt that the laws around patents can be improved. But the article you are showing here describes a problem which is not necessarily just a patent problem because the patents are enforce globally but yet only “the U.S. has the highest costs on drugs in the world”. There must be some other mechanism in place that causes this issue.

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There are other criticisms when it comes to patents and also criticisms for copyright.

No, if I copy the information from you without your consent, you still have that information. How can it be theft, if you still have it?

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Sorry, but i believe in laws and patents and their intended purpose. Are there criticism’s? Sure! Is there abuse? Sure? But that’s why we have laws and courts and jury’s. There are always going to be laws that are contentious and cases and or disputes that result in unfair judgements. But i believe in the principle of copyright and the intentions. Not really interested in getting into an opinionated back and forth on this topic so i won’t. We all have our own ideas and our own views. :peace_symbol:

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